Boat continues to be major source of anxiety; thank all the gods for the coworker (an expert in global shipping and customs) who is helping me with this. She’s asking if they can possibly store it in a warehouse until I come back; if not it’s also still possible it can be delivered Friday. If I have all that day to deal, I can definitely manage. Still, urg. Am rather annoyed with the companhy (Wintech) since initially it was supposed to be here in mid-May (in other words when I was at home for a month straight) and then they told me the shipping could be postponed until I got back. (This was last Saturday; on Monday I got the call that the boat was at sea.) This kind of thing happens when ordering rowing shells, because they’re large, fragile, deceptively complex to make (and row!), expensive and low volume, but it’s much more annoyng just now than it was last time I bought a boat.
The worst thing about being an expat is the feeling that you have no backup, no plan B. If this were the US, I would call one of the many rowers in Tempe and they could help me – probably She-Hulk, who combines utter integrity, utter reliability, a need to be helpful, and good boat-handling skills, but even if she were unavailable there are others who could manage. Here, I can ask some of my Dutch coworkers to help (Dutch rather than Taiwanese because they live in Taipei instead of closer to work) but I don’t know any of them well enough to ask them to manage the whole thing if it happened after I left, and anyway none of them are rowers so they wouldn’t know how to. I will ask them if I just need someone to carry the other end of a boat, though. But right now, kind as my coworkers are, a few rowing friends would be awfully nice to have around.
Another part of this, of course, is just not understanding how the (local part of) the world works well enough to create Plan B. And then there’s the part where Rudder and I are both traveling all the time, because having two of us here would also make it all much easier – two to carry boats, assemble racks or whatever.
This better be a good boat, is all. It will be worth it if it turns out as lovable as Sunset (my Hudson) is.